


Waiting To Be Born

by Simbeline



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Concept Fic, Gen, Major Character Death is canonical character death, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Unbeta'd, mentions of other MCU characters - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-13
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2020-10-17 18:21:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20625476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Simbeline/pseuds/Simbeline
Summary: The last wish of a dying man holding the most powerful objects in the universe creates something new.





	Waiting To Be Born

**Author's Note:**

> A sprinkle of American Gods, with a dash of Aerith from FF7: Advent Children, plus probably the influence of every cool thing I've ever read.

_..._ ** _Tony Stark_ ** _ be with us for our final tomorrow, Amen._

It becomes aware of words, half joking and half serious. Becomes aware in general from one moment to the next. It can understand the words, but doesn’t really know what they _mean_, although they send a strange sense of patronizing amusement through it.

It has never needed to beg for help on finals, it somehow knows, although it also can’t imagine exactly what a ‘final’ is.

It does sound pretty ominous, it supposes.

Another thought, this one more complete, also about a ‘final’: _Dear _**_Tony Stark_**_, please help this idiot on their calculus final tomorrow._

And another: _We pray to _**_Tony Stark_**_ \- we have been absolute dumbasses, but please let us pass._

All of the words a light quality to them, like the people saying them are pretty sure it won’t do anything, but they’re also desperate enough to try with a kind of semi-seriousness that gives the words _weight_.

It comes to understand, after countless words, that its name must be Tony Stark - all the words it hears call it that. It comes to understand that it must be the dreaded time of year when there are many ‘finals’ - although it again gets the amused sense that it has never had to worry about them itself.

It feels like it wants to help - like these desperate souls are somewhat idiotic, but in a cute, amusing kind of way. When it hears the words again, it somehow focuses and catches the words, following them to the one who said them.

_I should have studied, I know I should have. But I just couldn’t focus with Mom sick so... _ ** _Tony Stark_**_, if you’re listening, please help me tomorrow._

It suddenly can see, and realizes that before it couldn’t. It sees an image of a being with eyes swollen red in a way it associates with crying, hunched over a desk in a tiny room with piles of notes and books.

It knows, suddenly, that unlike the words it heard before, this being is desperate because it spent too long caring for its Mother who might be gone soon.

Somehow, it remembers having a Mother who went away forever.

It reaches out and strokes the being’s hair, and the being lights up under its hand. It can tell, somehow, that it _answered_ this being’s words - no, _prayer_. The being - _she, Liz, this being is called Liz_ \- would still have to study, of course, but it had given her the gift of focus, of memory, of energy. It drifts into mostly unawareness again, feeling strangely exhausted for something with no apparent body.

And then, some in determinable time later, it hears her again: _Thank you, _**_Tony Stark_**_, thank you thank you thank you. I did it because of you, I’m sure of it._

In the endless nothing of unawareness, it suddenly feels warmth. Somehow, she has become attached to it - _no, him, he feels like a him_ \- in a way none of the other beings who sent prayers to him are. Because he answered her? Because she believes in him? He doesn’t know.

Liz’s warmth gives him energy, and he starts to hear more prayers - _Dear _**_Mr. Stark_**_, Daddy says you were the best en-ji-near ever, please help me be one too when I grow up - _**_Tony Stark_**_, wherever you are now, just let me get through this class without panicking - I need that sweet _**_Stark_**_ magic, man, help me out - _

And he hears another name, one that he also knows is _his_ the way _Tony Stark_ is - **_Iron Man_**_, give me the strength to get through this - Daddy says you’re gone but I know you aren’t. _**_Iron Man_**_, save me!_ \- 

He can’t do much. Every time he reaches out and helps someone the effort makes him exhausted. Not everyone he helps thanks him, or stays with him the way Liz does, but some do. Enough that he doesn’t have to drift into blank nothingness every time he helps. Enough that he can keep an eye on those spots of warmth that are _his_ while listening to others who call for him.

He discovers that he doesn’t have to help someone directly for them to believe in him, sometimes.

A collapsed building, with a support beam that stopped just above a little girl - _Maria, just like-_ shielding her from the rest of the building. He’d tried so hard to just stop the collapse, but he couldn’t, wasn’t strong enough.

The rescue worker sits with her and listens as she tells him how she prayed to Iron Man, and he answered. She tells her parents when they’re found, and three tiny, flickering balls of warmth join Maria’s blazing one. _If anyone could save people from beyond the grave maybe it’s _**_Iron Man_**, they think.

A study group, doing a vaguely pop-Pagan ritual before a test. They probably saw it in a low budget horror movie. Two of them are completely joking, but the other two are mostly serious when they call for him. He doesn’t even have to do much, they had all studied, but he gifts the two serious ones with calm and focus.

After the test, he can feel all four of them. The two believers got perfect scores. _Help a bro out next time, wouldya _**_Stark_**_?_

He feels more and more and more and more until he can follow his believers and see the world, jumping from person to person somehow understanding all of them although he knows they aren’t all speaking the same language.

There’s nothing but the work, listening to prayers and choosing who to help, nurturing the warmth that gives him power until - 

_‘Morgan Stark, nice to meet you.’ - _There’s something else. One of his believers has met-met - he doesn’t know but he knows she’s _important_ despite not being one of his believers. His believer - _Megan, college freshman _\- is freaking out because - _ohmystarkit’s_**_TonyStarks_**_daughter!_ \- and he instantly reaches out to give her calm. This Morgan is his daughter? He doesn’t know how something like him has a human child, but he wants to know more.

Megan, blessed with his calm, manages to not freak out and also not ask any stupid questions, and her and Morgan become friends. 

Megan bashfully admits, after several months when Morgan catches her at it, that she prays to Tony Stark because she’s never been able to believe in anything, but at least she knows Tony Stark had been real and had been a genius.

Surprisingly, Morgan just looks kind of incredulous but accepts it. It makes things kind of awkward, especially when Morgan realizes that’s the reason Megan always studies with her StarkPhone beside her, face down so she can see the Stark Industries logo.

It’s not until several weeks later, with a note of hope - _This is so stupid but _**_Tony Stark_**_, Dad, apparently you have some kind of cult and-and I want to believe that you’re still around in some way, more than just your name and your tech, so if you’re there, could you give me a sign?_

He rushes towards the prayer and it’s her, his daughter. _A sign, what kind of sign? She didn’t ask for help, how-_

And somehow - _tech, she mentioned tech, right?_ \- his attention catches on her phone and he can see inside it, all the files and he searches and searches until he finds one, one labeled _Dad_ and opens it to the one point that somehow he _knows_ is right - 

“I love you 3000,” the recording of Tony Stark says, and Morgan Stark starts crying but he can also feel her now, feel her belief in whatever he is - _named Tony Stark but not quite Tony Stark, can he really be the same person when he barely knows who Tony Stark is other than what people believe he was?_ \- and he wraps arms that look like Tony Stark’s arms around her and even though he can’t actually touch her she seems to know he’s doing it and it makes her cry harder - 

She doesn’t tell her mother. He hears what she thinks - _even in this crazy world, who would believe me?_ She tells Megan though, that she believes her now.

They both start putting their StarkPhones face down on the table when they study together, and when a group of them forms it becomes a ritual. Someone posts a picture of their phones on the table - #StudyingWithStark - and they don’t mean Morgan. 

It turns out a ritual like that - one made specifically for him, maybe? - can fuel him to. It becomes the habit of tens of thousands of students with StarkPhones around the world. Some of them don’t even have real StarkPhones, can’t afford them, but they painstakingly draw the Stark Industries logo on their hands and textbooks, and somehow that works too, as long as they keep the words face up while they study and _believe_.

He feels like he’s getting close to something, like there’s a threshold holding him back and he just needs to get enough support, enough _belief_ to punch through it and then... something. He doesn’t know what it is but he _wants_.

The moment comes when he’s trying to help a group of kids trapped in their classroom after an earthquake. He managed to protect them from the initial collapse, fuelled by their cries of **_Iron Man_**_! Help!_, but now it’s been three hours and there’s very little fresh oxygen coming into the room. Not enough for thirty panicking kids to survive much longer on, anyway.

The rescue workers, one of them a believer, are still too far away.

He feels a sense of deep, familiar frustration. The feeling of _not enough, never enough, too slow, too weak, too human-_

But he’s not human - he doesn’t know what he is but he’s not like the warm beings that fuel him.

So he _pulls_. He pulls on the warmth and takes more and more and more into himself, he just needs to make a hole - big and stable enough for both oxygen and the rescue workers to get in. And then -

_Heat_. He pushes off the ground with his hands - no, _repulsors_ \- and punches through the debris above,carefully melting the sides into slag that will hold well enough for now. Well enough to matter. 

When he reaches air he sees himself through the rescue worker’s eyes - it doesn’t look like Iron Man, exactly, it’s just a shadow with points of light, but still, someone can _see him_. 

And soon after he gets lost under a deluge of memories. _Tony Stark_’s memories.

Remembers Father (_disapproving_) and Mother (_loving_), remembers death (_loss-grief-drowning_), remembers being reborn in sand and heat, and Stane (_betrayal_) and friends (_loyalty-betrayal-forgiveness_). Remembers family (_love-regret-conviction_).

Remembers holding the greatest powers in the universe inside a fragile, human body and that body failing. 

Remembers a spark, a last wish - _but I don’t want to rest, I want to _**_stay_**.

A last wish that birthed... him. Maybe he’s Tony Stark, maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s just something made from the bits of Tony Stark that were left, like Vision was made from JARVIS (_love-loss-regret_). 

Either way, he’s the Tony Stark that’s here now, he’s what people think of when they pray to him, and he believes - _in his heart, in his soul, in his body that’s still just a shadow but becoming more and more solid, now in the shape of just a man, not Iron Man_ \- that this planet is _his_ and the people on it are _his_. 

And knows that as long as people believe in him and pray to him and give him power, he can protect them better than the human Tony Stark ever could.

He appears outside a house in the woods. It’s Christmas, and the lights are warm and bright. Inside are all the people who once mattered so much to him, those that are left anyway. 

They can’t see him - only people who believe in him can - but he presses a hand against the window and _aches_ for them. Morgan comes out of the kitchen wiping her hands and quietly gasps, her shock unnoticed in that moment with all the other activity going on. She approaches the window and puts her hand over his against the glass. 

_Welcome back,_ she whispers, eyes misting with tears.

He’s not crying, isn’t even sure if he _can_ but he feels heavy with _regret-wasn’t there-lost time_ and full of _love-awe-protectiveness_. 

And then he hears a prayer from across the world, someone praying _if _**_Iron Man_**_ were here, he’d save us, please please please-_

He takes his hand away and makes a little peace sign, mouth pulled into a cocky smirk. She waves back, eyes still wet but now more happy to have seen him then sad to see him leave.

And he instantly goes to his believer’s side, now Iron Man. 

They can see him, and he can feel their awe and reverence and a tinge of fear.

It’s exactly what he needs. 

**Author's Note:**

> So... yeah it's more just a concept. I'm marking it as complete but in the unlikely event I feel inclined to add more scenes I will.


End file.
